Supporting Education in a Suitcase: Investments and donations
Education in a Suitcase, EIAS, is a non-profit organisation which uses grants and donations to fund tablets, software development and educational content for distribution to low-income regions.
Education in a Suitcase currently supports several hundred students in Kenyan schools, from primary to university level, with a goal to expand these numbers every year.
The most important part of the content provided is inside the tutor-web educational software. This note describes options for individuals and organisations to support EIAS. This support can be in the form of grants, donations and investments in addition to assistance with development of software or content.
A cryptocurrency, the Smileycoin or SMLY has been set up to reward students who work in the tutor-web. EIAS has an income stream of Smileycoins, provided directly by miners who mine this cryptocurrency.
Grants
EIAS actively seeks grants from various organisations. In addition to EIAS applications, grants for tutor-web development are obtained through several projects only loosely linked to EIAS.
Donations
Prospective donors can support EIAS directly through the EIAS donation page at http://educationinasuitcase.com/donation/en/index.html which accepts most credit cards.
Donors are offered some Smileycoin as perks for their support. This is not a formal sale since there no fixed exchange rate; it is merely a token of appreciation.
Investments
EIAS has an income stream of Smileycoins and these can be sold and bought on several cryptocurrency exchanges. Obviously, increased demand leads to a higher price and greater value to the EIAS income stream.
An investor can thus support EIAS simply by purchasing Smileycoins on any market. This is different from classical donations in several ways:
- The donation is not simply a one-off donation but should be viewed as a longer-term investment.
- The investor purchases a number of SMLY in accordance with the amount invested and the current market price of SMLY.
- The investor is in control of the purchase and is free to resell the Smileycoins at any time.
- Smileycoins in excess of 25 M, stored in a single SMLY address, also provide dividends, paid out in SMLY. In July 2018 these form about 18% interest p.a.
- In light of the volatile price of cryptocurrencies a long-term view is essential, which goes hand-in-hand with the need for a longer term view of supporting EIAS.
Smileycoin donations and dividends
The Smileycoin in mined like most cryptocurrencies and the mining process generates new coins. Unlike most, however, the miner only retains a small fraction, 10%, of the new coins. The rest are split evenly between investors and Education in a Suitcase. In addition, whenever students do not redeem their SMLY earned in the tutor-web, those SMLY get automatically donated to EIAS. Donations of SMLY are therefore a constant revenue stream for Education in a Suitcase.
It is for this reason that any SMLY purchase is also support for EIAS.